Talk:Republic of the Congo
Congo-Congo I think it's unfair that one Congo is "by default", while the other is "D.R. of". Of course they should not have renamed the country in the first place, but still. In Wikipedia both Congos are equal — because Wikipedia is visited by the real Kinshasians/Zairians and they feel offended when they are considered not enough Congolese. Let's not offend one the largest nations of Africa, okay? — Hellerick 15:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC) :It's simpler this way, like Georgia or Washington. ;-) 22:01, 9 January 2009 (UTC) ::This case is quite different from those: Georgia as a country obviously takes priority over Georgia as a state, and so does Washington as a state over a district. In the case of Congo we are dealing with equals: countries. Both equally entitled to the name "Congo", so I don't think "Congo" should link to just one of them, especially considering the fact that when people mentioned "Congo" to me nine out of ten times they were actually refering to Congo-Kinshasa, the one it doesn't link to at the moment. --Karsten vK (talk) 12:07, 10 January 2009 (UTC) :::We could make a page that would be both a disambiguation page, and contain all the Congolese flags, including flags of Zaire and Belgian Congo. — Hellerick 12:23, 10 January 2009 (UTC) Good point, Karsten. However, I've seen (most often) that the simplest way is to give Congo to the simpler country name, Republic of the Congo. FOTW does this (http://flagspot.net/flags/cg.html, http://flagspot.net/flags/cd.html); Google Maps does this (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=fr&ie=UTF8&ll=-3.513421,21.357422&spn=23.777211,28.300781&z=5); the United Nations does this (http://www.un.org/members/list.shtml); even the ccTLD codes for the countries give a d'' to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I definitely prefer simplicity, so whatever you do, please don't do any disambiguations. Please? 18:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC) :Google Maps does not have "Congo", it has "Congo (Brazzaville)". United Nations does not have Congo, it has "Congo, Republic of the" (while most countries are mentioned by their short names). FOTW has Congo because when it appeared there was just one Congo, and nobody bothered to change that (it's too complicated to edit FOTW -- I know so many inconsistencies and minor mistakes there!). For the same reason ISO has the code "cg" for ROC. And I can cite many sources where the countries are treated as equal, ''Wikipedia and CIA's World Fact Book among them. :BTW, Congolese franc is the currency of DRC, not of ROC. :If we'd live twenty years ago you would call West Germany "Germany", and East Germany "German D.R."? — Hellerick 11:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC) ::I do agree with FlagFreak that we should avoid direct disambiguation whenever logically possible (Washington and Georgia were good examples of that), but I don't think we should avoid it at all costs. ::Except for FOTW (which I'd have to agree has its share of mistakes, mostly minor and harmless from what I've seen, but they are present) all your sources use some form of distinguishing between the two. The ccTLD is only "cd" bacause "co", "cn" and "cg" had already been taken, for the same reason that Serbia was forced to include it being a republic in its ccTLD: "rs". ::My suggestion would be not to use the full name but stick to a policy to use names as simple as possible whilst maintaining correctness. In other words: I'd rename the articles "Congo-Brazzaville" and "Congo-Kinshasa". Full names would be my second choice; I don't like the prospect of having to call Macedonia "FYROM" or Taiwan "Republic of China". ::I absolutely don't think "Congo" should be used to refer to just one of the countries, so regardless of whether "(Democratic) Republic of" or the capitals are used to distinguish between the two, "Congo" should either be a non-existing page or a disambiguation page; and I'd say the latter would be a lot more user friendly. --Karsten vK (talk) 15:15, 11 January 2009 (UTC) :::I'm going to try out a disambiguation page. As Karsten said, it would be very user-friendly. :-) However, I still want to avoid disambiguations like these in the future. Heheh. 23:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC) Simplification I don't understand what's purpose of these simplifications. Listing alternative names is necessary to help users to find what they want. One of the most important attributes of a national flag is name of the country it belongs to, and we should provide exhaustive information on the matter. — Hellerick 17:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC) :One thing that can frustrate users is having to search through a huge amount of information to find one simple thing. Writing articles is great, but there should be easy ways for users to find what they're looking for. ;-) 16:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)